Infonomics in Action

STRATEGY SELECTION

A major international retailer needed to prioritize information management and business intelligence strategies. However, without a formal understanding and assessment of what information they had and how it could be used to improve business process performance, their best intentioned strategies had no solid footing in reality. They adopted nascent valuation models that enabled them to gauge the relative characteristics and potential financial benefits of different portfolios of information, plus an formal estimate of the costs to acquire, administer and apply the information–thereby giving them a complete economic picture of each type of information available to solve a select set of business problems.

INFORMATION INNOVATION

A market research organization recognized the benefit of information products in that they are cheap to produce and transport, and unlike physical products can be resold continually without depletion. They used this thinking and an approach to modeling the information product’s lifecycle costs-to-revenue to develop high-value, high-revenue producing offerings that cost less and had higher margins than their competitors.

PREMIUM PAYOUT

A multi-million dollar industrial products business recognized that its diligence over the years in compiling information about its customers, suppliers and partners, along with detailed information about production, and sales functions, warranted a valuation premium from a potential acquiror. Adapting established intangibles valuation methods against their inventory of information, they created a supplemental balance sheet, which when presented to the suitors executives provided the evidence they need to demand and receive a significant valuation premium.

INSURING INFORMATION

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 insurers denied any and all claims for the loss of information assets, recognizing and paying claims only on the loss of the hardware that housed it. Identifying this as an opportunity to better meet the needs of the information economy, one insurer is formulating the actuarial models and developing an insurance product to financially secure an enterprises’ information assets.